Archive for February, 2014

I am playing Dark Souls for the third time and I’m making this playthrough much harder than it needs to be. Dark Souls is a notoriously difficult action RPG. It finds all sorts of creative ways to hurt the player. It’s full of traps, ambushes and rooms of deadly enemies. It’s a game that’s tough but rarely unfair. It’s a game that requires a sort of slow, methodical approach. You must be wary at all times. Let your guard down for a second, and you’ll probably end up dead.

This was the year where I was going to quit video games. And I did about four or five times. But every time, I’d hear about some game that I knew I had to play or get an itch to return to a title I left unfinished and I’d come back to it. That, and I had a 8 month gap between finishing school and getting a full-time job. My love/hate relationship with the medium reached its zenith this year. The volatile game culture, the rampant misogyny, and growing corporate greed continue to make me sick. I attended PAX and that made me even sicker of gaming culture.

But these titles, and a few others, remind me that with each year the medium is maturing. People are creating new experiences and refining old ones into profound and rewarding titles. They’re still a bit off the beaten track, only one of these titles came from a AAA game developer. However, these titles are becoming easier to find and becoming louder voices in the conversation.

NOTE: All of these are based on PC release date because that’s the only platform I own.